Lie to your TV

Late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel sent out a camera crew to ask the man on the street what he or she thought about the new pope.

Of course, there is no new pope, he hasn’t been elected yet, or appointed, whatever is the proper term for the 15 guys in red yarmulkes blowing white smoke out of the Sistine Chapel. But, as it turns out, the man on the street had no trouble whatsoever coming up with well thought out answers regarding the new pope.

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Which makes me wonder if why we even bother to report on stuff, when folks can make up their own news just as skillfully as any reporter. They’ve watched so much television and so much news on television, it doesn’t really matter, one bit of news is indistinguishable from another.

Last week, The UN Human Rights Council exonerated Israel and the IDF in many cases in which it was previously alleged that the IDF committed war crimes during the operation.

Our friend Aryeh Savir at the Tazpit News Agency sent us this quote from the report:

“Palestinian armed groups continuously violated international humanitarian law, by launching indiscriminate attacks on Israel and by attacking civilians, thereby disregarding the principle of distinction. The armed groups failed to take all feasible precautions in attacks, in particular by launching rockets from populated areas, which put the population at grave risk. Furthermore, several Palestinians were killed by rockets launched by the armed groups that fell short and landed in the Gaza Strip.”

Now ask anyone in the world who killed those civilians.

So, your TV lies to you, you lie to your TV. It’s a status quo kind of thing, a modus vivendi, a perfect harmony. Everything your media tell you is a lie, everything you know is wrong—but you don’t get upset over it, you just carry on, producing lies of your own.

Remember the kids in the Hans Christian Andersen story who cried: “The emperor has no clothes”? Well, welcome to our new, well furbished, planetary nudist colony. Ain’t none of us got clothes.

Finally, to stretch Marshall McLuhan’s by now ancient statement, “The medium is the message” – na ugh, not any more. From now on, in our lovely colony, there is no message, only a mic shoved in someone’s face, in anticipation of a knowing answer about nothing.

The Mishnah (Sotah 9:15) noted that “The face of the generation is like the face of a dog.”

Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and
two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.